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PREVIEW NIGHT plus Rock Appreciation Day!

Below are some of the jewels that will be going into the shop on Wednesday and Thursday…

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be sure to enter in the discount code if you make a purchase in the shop from now until Monday the 8th at Midnight!

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ROCK APPRECIATION DAY:

For this month, I could only chose one stone. I’ll be highlighting Castle Dome Mine Turquoise, as its become a staple for my Mini Cave Lady Rings! I thought about doing black pyrite for a second stone, but don’t have enough jewelry pieces to use as examples. I’ll have to plot and cook up something big for August!

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Castle Dome turquoise is quite rare as it is a closed mine. Depicting bright light blues as it’s signature, it is located near Globe, Arizona. Castle Dome is also referred to as Pinto Valley Mine turquoise, and it is similar to it’s close neighbor the Sleeping Beauty Mine. Natural material of this is hard to get as most of the rough from when the mine was closed was stabilized and/or used for beads. It started, like many other turquoise mines, as a copper mine. Because of the mining methods used initially (aka blasting. yikes), many of the veins and structures of the turquoise later uncovered were extremely fractured. There wasn’t much solid rough available for lapidary artists to cut.

Personally, I’m not particular to ‘plain blues’ in turquoise. This mine in particular, (and its similarly hued cousin the Blue Moon mine) has grown on me. There are very subtle hues in a lot of the Castle Dome mine turquoise that you don’t find in your standard robin’s egg blue or Sleeping Beauty mine turquoise. It has light “watermark” patterns, that aren’t webbed or water webs. I adore pairing it with darkened silver, as it gives it contrast to highlight the stone. It also makes for a macabre pairing, and always reminds me of the bottom of pools.

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I’ll be using more of this turquoise in fresh designs soon. What’s pictured is all I have left!